well, duh, isn't that whats always happened in the past ? a few issues past (of design news) there was this ad by a miniature motor manufacturer depicting 3 swat team members throwing a baton shaped robot around the side of a container to gather intelligence about a situation in a container yard. what situation in your house might be eligible for observation ? since much of whats depicted here is hobby technology, i wonder how other nations might be experimenting . microsoft's kinect, a cheap solution with SDK downloadable, less that $150, is a great set of eyes and ears for the military experimenter in (fill in the countries you hate or are fearful of)... well, enjoy today and tomorrow, thats the place we are and the place we're goin' to.

You are right about Wi-Fi. It is only sort of hacker resistant. So a set of functions that would be fine for a robot washing windows would not be good enough for a robotic watchman. And just consider how secure a robotic "soldier" with two mini-cannons at even 2000 rounds per minute would need to be. Perhaps one of those secure military protocols might be secure enough if it were to use encrypted commands coupled with IFF logic judgement.

Funny you should mention hacking, William--WiFi is eminently hackable and that fact often crosses my mind when writing about the wireless comms used in these mobile, semi- or fully-autonomous robots. I've read that it's a secure version of WiFi, but have not checked that out: my charter is robots, not comms. Does anyone know what the secure military protocols are?

Jack, I think your comment is right on. I often think the same thing when researching these: what the heck are they doing that they aren't telling us about, if these are the publicly announced models? OTOH, some of the uses for the publicly announced models aren't really discussed in detail, but you can often read between the lines.

Some of these robots may be suyitable for "running point" in a hostile area patrol, and they appear to offer a lot of advantages. For starters they could be set to relay what they observe back to those behind them, so that even if they are destroyed or disabled, what they saw is available for others to see. That much alone is quite valuable. In addition they are smaller targets and more robust as far as taking damage. They may not yet have adequate judgement to be safe to use for asaulting, but they certainly would be a huge benefit for observing and defusing ordinance of all kinds. But until we have a control system that is completely immune to hacking it would not be very smart to deploy something that could be turned against us. That fact should be obvious to all, and it is why actual robotic warriors are still a ways off.

Elizabeth, It amazes me as to how quickly robotic systems advance and the great uses they are designed carry out. I would have to say that each is tremendously unique and their mission is well defined before development work begins. Thank you for giving us this great update.

The day I stand face to face with a military robot used to control me, is the day I leave whatever country I am in. The impersonal lifeless feel I get from this brings to mind a dystopian future, like THX or Cloud Atlas. The sad part is, many people come into contact with these types of devices all the time. Imagine living countless decades, then to be killed by a robot.

Industrial workplaces are governed by OSHA rules, but this isn’t to say that rules are always followed. While injuries happen on production floors for a variety of reasons, of the top 10 OSHA rules that are most often ignored in industrial settings, two directly involve machine design: lockout/tagout procedures (LO/TO) and machine guarding.

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